As promised, we have the winners from last week's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning giveaway! We also have the news accrued from the past several days, including my personal favorite: StarCraft 2 RISK and World of Warcraft Monopoly. Those are my two favorite board games, so having them paired up with two of my favorite digital games seems a bit surreal.

In other news, we are still looking for a PHP developer and a sales manager. We are doing interviews all week, so make sure to get your information in if you want a chance to work here at Wowhead!

World of Warcraft Monopoly® and StarCraft Risk®

We’re pleased to announce a partnership with USAopoly to release fresh takes on two classic board games. Monopoly®: World of Warcraft® and RISK®: StarCraft® combine tried-and-true foundations with new designs and gameplay elements inspired by our popular gaming universes. Those who dare to engage will discover a new chance to claim supremacy, both over their friends and over the battle-torn lands of Azeroth and the Koprulu Sector.

These games will formally debut at the 109th annual Toy Fair this Sunday, February 12 in New York City.

We’re holding a poll on Facebook right now where you can vote on which player pieces will make it into the final Monopoly: World of Warcraft board game! Ten options, including Murky, Chen’s Keg, Mechagnome, and a Spellbook are present, and the six most popular pieces will be represented in the game when it launches this May.

(Pieces pictured are casting sculptures and don’t reflect the final product.)

Descend into a world of myth, magic, and legendary adventure to battle for control of World of Warcraft’s iconic locations. Featuring custom graphics from our artists and designers, the Monopoly game’s land grab includes coveted real estate such as Twilight Highlands, Grizzly Hills, and the Swamp of Sorrows. In the rush to rule over the faction capitals of Orgrimmar and Stormwind, players will roll Alliance- and Horde-themed dice, and feverishly buy, sell and trade in true MONOPOLY fashion, until one player controls the lands and vanquishes all comers. The game retails for $39.95 and will be available in May at specialty stores across North America.

RISK: StarCraft

The forthcoming release of RISK: StarCraft will see players choose from the terran, protoss, or zerg factions and six unique heroes before going head to head in this board game classic. The struggles portrayed in the real-time strategy of StarCraft adapt perfectly to classic tabletop RISK gameplay, and the winner will be determined by astute deployment of military might and strategic field tactics. RISK: StarCraft will include three play modes and sports over 290 custom playing pieces. The game launches this summer and will be available in specialty stores throughout North America with a suggested retail price of $49.45.

We have a bunch of blue posts from throughout the week for you to read. It's been a busier week than normal, with Blizzard seemingly finally waking up and getting ready to show us the goods! With this week's earlier announcement that a press event scheduled for March, we can only hope February passes as quickly as possible, because I think we're all dying to hear more about those pandas.

And possibly their brews.

With all the recent posts turning focus back to Mists, what do you guys think--when will Mists of Pandaria be released? Do you think we could be leveling this Fall in the new continent...or do you think it will be further off than that? Or hey, maybe sooner?

Mists of Pandaria

I like your thread, Vorps! It's great to see some positive discussion and speculation about where this game is headed. :)

We're definitely very focused on opening the doors a little wider to new ideas to really grasp onto what will make this game as fun as possible. It's 7 years old after all. We're not going to reinvent the wheel in Mists of Pandaria, but we want to introduce new types of compelling content with meaningful reward structures so your progression paths don't feel quite as redundant.

You'll get a captivating story, breathtaking new lands to explore, a wide array of new and awesome good/bad guys (from what I've seen, REALLY awesome), a slew of new dungeons and raids, a new playable race, a new class, many outstanding systems improvements, etc.

We hope these features are more or less to be expected with virtually every expansion. But this time we're also pouring our heart and soul into some really fun new features that'll allow you to progress in slightly less conventional ways.

I get so excited every time I meet with Greg Street, Cory Stockton, Dave Kosak, and Tom Chilton to discuss everything they're working on each week. It's even got me logging into some of the characters I haven't played in a while more often lately, just because I want to be fully prepared to diversify my gameplay and explore different avenues of content on different characters.

I think it's really going to be about playing the game the way you want to play it, without feeling entirely like you're missing out on valuable rewards.

The pandaren mount is still being finalized, so what you’ve heard (or seen) are just rumors at this point. Obviously we want the mount to be something awesome, which will take some time to perfect. In addition to the pandaren mount, expect to see a ton of new mounts in Mists of Pandaria. In fact, if any of the new creatures being added in the next expansion look up to the task, I’m sure the developers are looking for ways to throw a saddle on them so they can adventure through Azeroth with our heroes. Though I’m sure some are more comical looking than others. :P Anyway, once the information is ready, we’ll get it out to all of you. Trust!

The Book of Glyph Mastery is actually a topic we’ve been discussing in our meetings. I can’t make any promises just yet but can at least acknowledge that we’re tossing around ideas for the book and for researching new Inscription glyphs.

Retribution Paladin Bug

The bug where paladin Seals could sometimes cause excessive damage has been fixed. This bug came as a result of a hotfix we put in to fix an issue where some attacks, such as Scatter Shot, were still causing Vengeance in PvP situations. While these things may seem totally unrelated, it has to do with our proc system, which is an extremely complicated mechanic under the hood. We reverted that hotfix, meaning you may sometimes see Vengeance in PvP. But we don’t think that will present a major balance concern at this time.

To be clear, we have no current plans to take action against players who experienced this bug last night unless we come across any extreme cases. The error was ours and we haven’t seen any evidence -- so far -- of players excessively exploiting the bug. We reserve the right to take action if we do find evidence of players crossing the line to repeatedly exploit this bug for major in-game advantages.

We have a lot of blue posts for you to digest today--from reminicising about Ulduar (and a blue subsequently explaining why Ulduar wasn't that awesome for everyone) to talking about AMPM cups, there's a little bit of everything Blizzard related. Zarhym even took the time to explain what Blizzard's thoughts are on that +intellect plate that always drops and everyone disenchants after their paladin is decked out.

Oh, and of course, everyone's talking about that BlizzCon cancellation as well.

Our friends at WoW Interface also posted their addon of the week. It's an amazing one. Have you ever wanted the encounter journal to have more encounters? You know, those pesky vanilla WoW ones and more? Well, thanks to the power of addons, it can be that awesome! Check out CompleteEJ over at WoWInterface today and let us know what you think.

The D3DB crew also has been tirelessly datamining some big Diablo III changes--check them out and the Beta Patch 10 notes here!

Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator

One of the problems we're specifically trying to address with the new talent system is getting back a little to the sense that there are 10 classes in the game (soon 11) instead of 30 (soon 34). A common complaint we saw about the Cataclysm talent design was that hybridization was greatly downplayed. Now it’s easy to dismiss going down two trees as never really having worked out, but it’s clear that many players are in love with the idea of doing so.

We also just want to keep the total number of talents under control, since the intent is that they have pretty big effects. If you're facing a Frost mage in PvP in Mists of Pandaria, you’ll have even less of an idea of what is in their toolbox than you do today. If you're a raid leader, you won’t be so certain what abilities your Discipline priest has to deal with the upcoming boss. A little of that keeps gameplay feeling fresh, but too much of it can be overwhelming. If each of the three mage specs, for example, had different talent choices, then we would have 612 total talents in the game instead of 198. Even 198 is a lot to learn. We also have the suspicion that coming up with 612 really awesome talents will be much more challenging. One of our design philosophies is concentrated coolness: have a few awesome things instead of a lot of mediocre things.

Now in some ways we are strengthening the concept of a spec by really pushing rotations and some other signature spells to specific specs. Immolate is Destruction only. Backstab is Subtlety only. Given that, talents are a great vehicle to make sure that your character still feels like a warlock or a rogue at the end of the day.

We really want to avoid talent synergies where only one talent on a tier makes sense for your character. This would be the case if say Fire mages did bonus damage with only Fire spells, or there was one healing talent on a tier competing against two DPS talents for your priest. Please continue to bring up concerns you have in this regard (though not necessarily all in this thread) and we will try to address them.

Bring Back Ulduar, Everyone Loved it, Even Ghostcrawler

What a coincidence! We happened to talk about raid design and results with Ghostcrawler and Mumper yesterday, and everyone looked back fondly on Ulduar, among others.

Yes, the same designers and artists who worked on Ulduar are still working on raids.

Here's the thing -- Ulduar is an example of a raid where lots of players got to enjoy the first few bosses, and very few players ever saw the last few. Yogg Saron and Algalon were among the least-killed bosses ever, and not because they were exceedingly difficult. Rather, clearing the dungeon all the way to Yogg took up a big chunk of a raiding week (and you only had an hour to kill Algalon), and the ability to extend raid lockouts came later in 3.2.0 (but extending raid lockouts means getting less loot overall). Raid Finder partially resolves the length-of-raid problem, so we can consider designing longer raids, but that's not always an easy call. Long raids mean longer development time, and while some players might be willing to wait, we understand why others might get impatient.

Of course, having multiple raids in a tier (like the combination of Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent) has the advantage of giving players different environments to play in while potentially making scheduling and logistics easier.

Pushing a big red button for Mimiron was very cool, and again is fondly remembered. We have created something like 40 raid bosses since the creation of those encounters however, and we cant help but think that it would start to feel really gimmicky and forced if every raid encounter had its difficulty set by pushing a button, (or not killing adds, or changing the order you kill the bosses, or the other mechanics we used in Ulduar). We think Mimiron would feel less special if there were six more bosses in the game with big red buttons, and we’re just not sure the design space is there to have a near infinite variety of means by which players launch a heroic mode in game.

Nonetheless, because there are so many requests for those style mechanics, we are considering doing a few bosses with optional modes (in the same way Mimiron, Freya or Sartharion had them) in Mists of Pandaria.

Team Liquid Interview with Blizzard

Hot off the presses and fast on the heels of the recently announced 2012 Battle.net World Championship event set for later this year, Team Liquid took the time to interview Ilja Rotelli, director of global community and eSports at Blizzard Entertainment. The interview looks deeper into the new structure of the Battle.net World Championship and the future of Blizzard eSports. Here’s a brief snippet from the interview to whet your appetite.

At the national qualifier level, do you hope to hold some tournaments that are completely open to anyone who wants to compete?

Ilja Rotelli: That is precisely one of the design philosophies we originally adopted. The idea is that we want to make a more aspirational and participatory eSports environment for StarCraft. The idea that there are superstars that seem so far away, that one can't hope to become; this makes eSports very restrictive.

Blizzard has a slightly different goal from eSports companies. If you think very frankly about the business goal for Blizzard as a company, we gain when more people play the game, and a strategy that makes sense to achieve that goal is to go grassroots. We don't have plans in place yet, but in my dreams, this is the beginning, where we go as grassroots as we can for the first year. Then, in 2013, we would love to add an additional layer to the bottom of the structure, to be even more grassroots than now. This is just a philosophy, not a practical plan that we have in place, but certainly that is one of the design principles we have been using so far.

Expanding on BlizzCon's Cancellation

Yeah it's a bit disappointing because we all really do enjoy being able to 'open the doors' so to speak. But, it is an enormous effort by all employees, including our game designers and artists, not to mention customer support and quality assurance, PR, our business departments, and *hot breath on fingernails & shirt rub* Community & eSports to make a BlizzCon happen. In a year when we're working to release multiple titles (knock on wood) it makes sense to focus our efforts. Also with multiple game releases we just wonder if we'd be at a point with any of them where we'd have anything really big or new or cool to talk about.

We didn't have a BlizzCon in 2006 either, and at that time we were really strong on the idea that BlizzCon isn't really supposed to be and doesn't have to be an annual event. Of course then we have it for five straight years in a row... which obviously built some expectation.

Personally I always enjoy seeing the excitement, the rushing crowds, hearing the clicking of mice on the demo stations, and waiting in agony as the seconds countdown to an announcement and then the waves of emotion from the crowd that follow it. But thinking about our year and what we're trying to get done already without a BlizzCon, and having to think pretty hard about what we'd have to announce or demo, it just makes sense to me not to have one.

Here's to the Battle.net World Championship, it's going to be awesome, and to a bigger and better BlizzCon in 2013

+Intellect Plate: Will it Ever be Useful?

The situation with intellect plate is an ongoing discussion among the designers, but we have yet to come up with a solution that's better than just continuing to make intellect plate.

Let Holy paladins wear Strength plate – This would require a lot of conversions. Does hit become Spirit? What happens to expertise? Do all Strength items convert or just actual armor pieces? Can paladins mix and match with Intellect jewelry and trinkets? Do Holy paladins also hit really hard in melee, or do they lose that ability? Does it make paladins too effective as hybrid classes if they can share much of their gear across three different roles?Let Holy paladins wear mail – Our mail is designed to look like shaman or hunters, not paladins. It’s cruel not to let a paladin wear the paladin tier armor, and also weird that a given tier piece could be plate or mail even though it looks identical.Let priests wear plate – We like the design for priests as cloth-wearers, we would not want to drop less cloth overall (since only mages and locks would need it at that point), and we don’t want priests to look like warriors, DKs or paladins.

Individually these aren't difficult problems, and we have the ability to solve each of them, but at the end of the day the designers don’t think any of those solutions are preferable to just keep on making Intellect plate for Holy paladins. Maybe someday there will be a new class that also uses Intellect plate.

World of Warcraft Themed AMPM Cups

No less than four malevolent entities will adorn a special set of collectable drinking cups, available soon at ampm convenience stores. Beginning February 7, raiders of the Horde and Alliance can recount their victories over Azeroth’s most infamous villains as they sip their favorite fountain beverage from new new limited edition cups featuring Kil’jaeden, Illidan, the Lich King, and Deathwing.

These are true collector’s pieces, made only out of the best types of material from which polymer-based cups are typically forged. These four masters of evil may not have survived your sweet hand of justice, but they may just survive your dishwasher. For only $1.99 these cups will hold just about anything, from water or soda, to sand, rocks, or even other smaller cups!

No "Filler" in Mists of Pandaria

There's got to be a plan. Doesn't there?

There does and there is. There's not anything specific I can share on a time frame as of yet, but things are moving along well with Mists of Pandaria and we'll be getting you all more information on "what's next" as soon as possible. For those that were able to see the next expansion at BlizzCon, you'll have seen that we were relatively far along in development. As we've said before, we're working diligently to put out expansions a little bit quicker than we have in the past. But, as always, we want to make sure we release "when it's ready" as well.

*Note, the plan currently does not entail "filler" as per Dave's comments.

The results are finally in from our New Year's resolution giveaway--join me in congratulating the winners! Perculia and I read a lot of your resolutions and really found them entertaining so thanks for that! I will be emailing the prize codes on Friday, so be sure to have an updated email address if you are one of the winners--also make sure to check your spam if you don't get one by tomorrow afternoon PDT.

We've also included some round up posts, mostly responding to the difficulty changes for Dragon Soul announced last night as well as hints to a future Q&A session with Blizzard developers.

Blue Posts

Dragon Soul Normal and Heroic Adjustments

Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall. We have actual statistical data we base our changes on, we know exactly how many people are clearing these raids each week, we know exactly how many people are able to down just a few bosses, and how many were only able to down a few bosses every week for weeks on end and then stopped raiding altogether.

The issue we're constantly trying to combat is the one where people feel like they're just out of options. One way this is an issue is the content is too easy, they blasted through it, have everything they could possibly want, and have nothing else to do. Ideally that's a small subset of very hardcore players. For everyone else it's a feeling of just being stuck with no possible way to progress. Very few players are willing to suit up, buff up, do all the necessary requirements to raid, jump in, and then do no better than they did last week for hours and hours, only to return next week and do the same.

If a guild doesn't want the help, they're free to opt out of the buff. For those that do it's an approximate 5% change, which is pretty minor, and we expect it to be about a month before we raise it another 5%. This first change will absolutely help the guilds that are just barely sc@%#!*# by, or just need a tiny bump to cross the next hurdle, but it's just not logical to exclaim that someone will roll into Raid Finder, grab a couple items, then be looting Heroic Deathwing's corpse the next night.

We feel the content has been out for quite a while now, that most people who have progressed and downed Deathwing on Heroic have done so, they've had sufficient time to celebrate in their accomplishments, and these very small progressive alterations will only help guilds that are already doing well in the raid get over some hurdles they may be facing.

Believe it or not there are actually guilds and raiding groups that are attempting to progress through Normal and Heroic raids, but are hitting a wall, and have been hitting a wall.

Call the news! People are having the same thing that happened to every raiding guild before them. You burn through the wall by getting better.

All it takes is a moment to step back, assess the entire landscape of humanity, and realize that not everyone is like you, nor should they have to be.

All it takes is a moment to step back, assess the entire landscape of humanity, and realize that not everyone is like you, nor should they have to be.

If they don't have to be like us, why do they have to have nerfs to get to our position in HM Raiding?

Because they want to and they pay the same amount for the game? I don't know, man. How is it good for the game to have 1% of players parading around for months and months and a 99% sitting around with nothing to do because they're sick and tired of wiping?

Your solution is "Well then they should get better or quit." and that's just not reasonable for a video game comprised of millions of people looking to just have some fun. It's still a computer game.

I don't think that saying 'they should get better or quit' is a reasonable solution at any point at all.

I am kind of confused though. We have LFR for DS, we have Normal, and we have Heroic. At what point do you look at a situation and say "Alright, this needs a nerf" when there's already a lower difficulty available?

If there's a easy, normal, and hard difficulty, why tweak normal until it becomes as easy as the easy mode?

Well the nerfs are going to be progressive enough, as I said, I don't see a 5% change being a big enough change for Raid Finder players to suddenly start clearing Normal. We also don't know where we'll end up. We plan to increase the spell by 5% about every month, but we're not sure if we'll need to. If we see a lot of people able to keep progressing and downing bosses, maybe 5% is all we need. It's going to be watching completion numbers and seeing where that gets us. We're not assuming we'll need to go as far as we did with ICC. It's not going to be automatic, our hand is on the dial.

So basically 5% starting off just like ICC and every month after that another 5% up till we hit 35% which according to wowhead appears to be the cap. So thats like what 7-8 more months at least of Cataclysm with no new content.

The increase is not automatic or set in its frequency. We will be manually controlling when it increases, if at all. It will be completely based on how many people we see able to complete the raid, and our decision to increase it or not.

Updated Character Models

We've acknowledged that the old character models could do with a revamp, and we're planning to get this done. But the point several of you raised about system requirements holds true; we want WoW to be accessible to those with older machines as well as those of you with top-end gaming rigs.

Talent Trees in Mists of Pandaria

There is homogenization that is good for the game, and homogenization that is bad for the game.

Consider Blood Lust/Heroism and Rebirth (battle rez). Those are very powerful abilities and probably mandatory for raiding. If shaman and druids were the only classes that brought them still, then every 10-player raid group would need a shaman and druid to be successful. In a game with 10-player raids and 11 classes, that means someone is excluded. Even worse, if yours is the guild with 2 really good rogues or hunters, you are going to have to make the choice to sit one of those players out in order to be optimal. Even if that hunter is a really nice guy or a good player, he can't come because you need Blood Lust. We don't think that's fun, and we know a lot of players agree. There are several abilities in this mandatory or near-mandatory category: interrupts, raid buffs, dispels and so on. We have no problems spreading those around, or homogenizing the abilities that mean groups can bring the player they want to.

The other category though is making each class feel a bit different when you play them. These are abilities or mechanics that tend to make your class or spec feel unique, but aren't mandatory. There are a lot of these in the game: Chakra, Cauterize, Bladestorm, Demonic Circle, etc. There are of course still going to be healing, survival, damage and movement abilities in the game that are equivalent in their effect as another classes' ability, but they all work a little differently, and hopefully make you feel different when you group with other characters or play different alts. It's important to us to protect those differences in the game.

Ask The Devs

It looks like Ask the Devs will eventually be returning, as the community team explains its lack of activity as of late.

These turned in to the live Q&A's we hold using CoverItLive. You can see the two we've done so far for World of Warcraft:

We plan to continue using CoverItLive for live dev Q&A's. No plans at current to go back to the old static AskTheDevs version.

Zarhym

I wrote a novella of a response to this thread before realizing Bashiok stealthed in and sniped this discussion. So I'm going to post my response anyway!

He says I'm too long winded. I say I'm more comprehensive. :p

They switched to the live Q&A, but then stopped doing those too for some reason.

This is sort of correct. We feel that the CoverItLive platform we used for two developer Q&As post-BlizzCon is a better format. The methods for choosing questions are never perfect -- especially when there are so many -- but CoverItLive allows us to answer more questions much more quickly than we did with "Ask the Devs," not to mention it takes up way less time for our developers.

We haven't stopped doing the CoverItLive developer Q&As. There are a couple of reasons we haven't done this in a while. For one, there are only so many questions we can field regarding future content (in this case Mists of Pandaria) before we have to step back and say, "wait until we have these things more fleshed out so we can put the upcoming features in a contextual preview." Also, we really want to make sure there isn't an expectation that these Q&As will be done at regular intervals. We'll host them when we feel they'll appropriately compliment new information that's gone out.

We are in the initial planning stages of the next Q&A for World of Warcraft, but its timing is still contingent upon a lot of other things. It just doesn't make sense to host another one right now when we haven't really released further previews of the next expansion since BlizzCon.

That said, our goal is to try and cover as much ground with CoverItLive as possible. We want to expose you to different development teams at appropriate times (whether it be class designers, UI designers, the art team, etc.) so you really get a feel for all of the work that goes into everything we do. At the same time we want to make sure we get these kicked off for our other franchises as well.

The biggest news here probably isn't the raid finder or the other tidbits, though those are all helpful--instead it's that they nerfed heroic Ragnaros yet again. There's no more geyser in phase four, which was ultimately the definitive deciding factor into a guild that killed it and a guild that didn't. Geyser was unforgiving, instantly wiping the raid for a player being a mere inch too close to another group; this is a huge nerf, so expect tons of people to go back to finish it (and maybe for loot and mounts!).

Raid Finder Tips

I think rather than making this a complaint thread about what people aren't doing, it may be helpful (as the OP started doing) to share some tips for people who maybe haven't ever had a chance to raid before, including what sorts of gear or items they should expect to bring or even the types of buffs they should be ready to apply etc.

What are the types of things anyone should do to be prepared to Raid?What types of items should they have ready to use in their bags?Should they bring extra to share or is it every man/woman for themselves?What are the best sort of buffs, spells, or even abilities that should be "must use"?Etc.

Let's turn this into a helpful thread to guide people toward being successful in the Raid Finder.

I'll add in a few myself:

For healers, stay on target. It's extremely important that if you're assigned a particular target to heal, that you keep on top of it. It can be tempting to cross-heal (and sometimes it may be necessary) but if everyone stays on top of their healing assignments, everyone should (for the most part) pull through.

For those who can lead, feel free to volunteer to lead the raid. Mark your targets and set your assignments (even if it seems like a straight forward encounter.) You'll be helping people learn how to take on the more difficult encounters in the end.

For those following, don't argue with the raid leader if you can help it. If you're following, sometimes it's best just to follow and see how things go. If you need to question the Raid leader, try to do it discretely. No one likes to be embarrassed or called out.

In the call, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said the majority of subscriptions lost came from China and other countries in the East. They also declined to provide a forecast for future numbers. However, though this may seem like a shocking number, you have to remember that this is during a lull in the expansion. Without major content patches, WoW tends to lose subscribers only to regain them during an expansion's launch. Here's to hoping Mists of Pandaria brings players back!

Without further ado, here's the news round up.

Wired.com Interview with J.Allen Brack on Mists of Pandaria

One of Blizzard’s strategies for continually expanding its incredibly popular massively multiplayer world has been the release of expansive add-on packages, which thus far have had serious, tortured names like Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King.

At its annual BlizzCon convention in October, the publisher said it would try a different tack with the next WoW package. Titled Mists of Pandaria, its primary additions to the fantasy world are a new playable race of martial artist pandas and a Pokémon-style system in which players can battle their virtual pets.

With dipping subscriber numbers (11.1 million, down from 12 million in 2009) and Electronic Arts’ competing MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic coming in December, it might seem like the unconventional new Warcraft package is something of a desperation move on Blizzard’s part, adding more mainstream-friendly features just to keep fans’ attention.

To get some clarification on Pandaria, Wired.com spoke with World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack at BlizzCon.

Wired.com: Pandaren have existed since Warcraft III. Why do the Pandaren race now?

J. Allen Brack: It’s been something that we wanted to do for a long time. We’ve talked about the Pandaren for just about every expansion. That’s definitely not a new idea for us; it was super popular with the fans when we put them in Warcraft III. It was super popular with us. So it was just one of those things in the back of our mind that we wanted to do even before the original game launched.

We started talking about ideas for the next expansion, and when we were wrapping up Cataclysm someone said, “Hey, let’s talk about the Pandaren again.” We started talking about it more and more. Then one day it just became, “Wow, we’re really excited about this idea,” which eventually became the Pandaren.

Wired.com: The Pandaren are the first race to be playable for both factions . Why do this now?

World of Warcraft production director J. Allen Brack.Photo: Blizzard

Brack: We talked about a great deal back in Cataclysm for the Goblin race. We thought that Goblins could be a neutral race because they’re neutral in the game already. Players start out as neutral and then you can go Horde or Alliance with that.

Obviously we ended up not doing that . But that was something we spent a lot of the time thinking about. The idea that was really compelling was that you start adventuring with people, and then one day, you have to choose sides. So that’s why we decided to do it this time around. It seems like it worked real well.

Wired.com: So why didn’t you end up doing that with the Goblin in Cataclysm?

Brack: We were really excited about the Worgens as well. We talked a long time about the Goblin and decided we really needed a more whimsical race on the side of the Horde, and we really need something that’s a little darker, a little more sinister on the side of the Alliance. We needed to bring a little bit more character to both those factions. We were really enamored with the idea of doing a Worgen and doing a shape-changing race. That was something that was one of our first ideas for Cataclysm. Goblin had been a fan favorite for years and years and years, and so that was on the list as well. Once we made that decision for Cataclysm that was going forward, we thought, “OK, well if we’re talking about a new race for the next expansion, then maybe we can resurrect the idea of players choosing the faction.”

You’re only neutral for 10 levels. When you get to level 10 you actually decide Horde or Alliance. When you’re in and you’re completing those first 10 levels, that’s very much in its own kind of environment. And the Pandarens that you see out in the world as a normal player, you’re going to see as either Horde or Alliance. You’re not going to see any neutral Pandarens out in the world.

Players who want to play as the Pandaren monks in Pandaria can do so whether they are Horde or Alliance, a first for the MMO. Image: Blizzard

Wired.com: Some critics are saying that Blizzard is “jumping the shark” by having cute “kung-fu pandas” in their expansion. What do you say to that?

Brack: We don’t really worry about that because we really feel that our fans are going to be really excited about it. We have the community that’s really excited about what we’re doing.

The team is really excited about doing it. So that’s really what’s important. When it comes out, it’s going to be great. I can understand the concept of “Why isn’t there a big bad guy?” in this expansion? But how many times can we say, “This bad guy is going to destroy the world now and this time it’s serious? No, this guy, he’s really, really, really, really bad!”

So taking a break from that was very conscious and just having a very different tone. Instead of Horde and Alliance, we team up to defeat the big evil. It’s about the discovery of this new land and how the conflict of the Horde and Alliance influences that. With Outland and then with Northrend we had these self-contained areas where players came for an adventure in the higher level. That was really successful.

With Cataclysm, we didn’t have that. It was very much focused on redoing the entire levels 1-60 experience. You didn’t have, “This is the high level area.” So that’s something we actually want to get back to, that kind of experience and that kind of visual.

Wired.com: As far as the Pandaren lore, clearly it was inspired by Asian cultures. How do you play to that without resorting to stereotypes?

Brack: We’ve always tried to make Warcraft very much its own thing. Certainly we have influences from all around the world. And certainly the panda is the symbol of China. Obviously, there’s a lot of influence, but it’s a very light touch of how much China it is or how much it is the rest of Asia. We just tried to take little bits here and there and incorporate it into our own thing.

Wired.com: Was there any consulting with your Chinese office, as far as that goes?

Brack: We talked with the office obviously, and they were really excited about what we were doing. The most important thing for the game is that the team making it should be excited about it. Because people who are excited about things that they’re working on they are going to put a lot more of their heart and soul into it and that’s really what makes great games.

Wired.com: Another thing that people either love or hate is the pet battle system. Would you liken it to Pokémon, as some are calling it? How would you describe the gameplay? Is it just a fun side thing, or are we going to see some serious pet PvP tournaments?

Brack: That’s a really good question. I think a lot of that is going to determine on the tuning which we haven’t actually made yet. The point of it is just to be a very fun thing that players can do. But you’d be amazed how hardcore people get about certain things. Actually, you probably wouldn’t be amazed…

So that’s definitely a goal for us, but more importantly it has to be fun and give something to players to do with their pets. People have been collecting pets for a lot of years now. When we put the very first pet in, people were super excited. Some said “Hey, I want my pets to battle each other.” Now we’re saying, “OK, that sounds great. Your pets should be able to battle each other. Let’s build a system around that.” When we did Cataclysm, we removed pets from your actual bags and put them all in your spell book, which means there’s a lot of people who have a lot of pets.

Wired.com: You said you’re still working on the pet tuning. How are you going to balance that? Are rare pets better, or is it how players equip them?

Brack: It’s definitely going to be how players equip their pets. So you’ll be able to say, “Hey, I want this pet,” and that pet maybe is the ultra rare one that has these three or four abilities. Someone else can have a common pet that has similar abilities or different types. It’s much more a rock, paper, scissors kind of approach in terms of how the combat is going to work as opposed to, “I’ve got the one uber-rare pet and now I’m all powerful.” That’s how we’re going to do it.

Wired.com: Are you worried about farming for rare pets, then? I can see China starting pet farms for rare pets because pets are…

Brack: Pets are very special. They’re close to people’s hearts. We haven’t seen a whole lot of farms in terms of stuff like that. That’s a really interesting question. I really hadn’t thought about how that would work. We’ll definitely be looking at all the various drop rates and how people actually get all the various pets in the game. Our goal is to actually have all the pets that you currently have translate right into that system. So there will be new pets for you to get. But you’ll also be able to start using your existing pets as well.

Wired.com: With so many expansions out, are you worried about new players being confused about which ones they need to have and which ones they should buy and in what order? How do you solve that?

Brack: That’s something that we talk about all the time. Over the summer we actually rolled the Burning Crusade expansion into the , so there is no Burning Cruade expansion. And that’s something we evaluate on a pretty regular basis. “How many boxes should we have on the shelf?” It can be very overwhelming. We don’t like that. And we want it to always be clear what players need.

Right now all of our expansions extend the level cap. So there’s really no way to just buy the brown box and Mists of Pandaria, because how would you get from level 60 to level 85? So they do need everything to get the newest content. Will we roll Wrath of the Lich King into the brown box? Eventually yes, just like we did Burning Crusade. When will we do that? I don’t think we know yet.

Wired.com: Both Diablo III and Mists of Pandaria feature the Monk class. Did you talk to the Diablo team about this? Did you get together to discuss the name or the class traits?

Brack: It’s pretty separate, honestly. Sometimes we’ll have discussions like, “Hey, we’re using the same name for this kind of system.” That can maybe cause some confusion, but that’s super rare. All the various teams are very solo. Which is not to say we don’t talk, but we don’t have the design council of Blizzard that decides, “OK, for World of Warcraft we’re doing monk. For Diablo we’re doing monk. For this game we’re doing that.”

It really doesn’t work that way. Each team decides what they want to do. On the couple times we’ve had a name collision, we’ll say, “Hey, we need to name this a little bit differently or something like that.” It’s really rare.

Wired.com: In the past, Blizzard has promised a World of Warcraft expansion every year. Has that just become too unrealistic?

Brack: A long time ago, someone made an on-the-record comment it would be great if there were expansions every year. I think that would be great. That’s not really something that we can really do today. Mostly, we just try to do the best thing we can and make sure it’s a great experience. The most important thing is when players get the game that it’s a great experience. We are trying to make the expansions faster. There’s no question about that. We haven’t been really successful with that at all. Every expansion has taken about two years. In fact, Cataclysm took longer than all of our other expansions. So, yeah it’s something we’re definitely trying to get better at, but we’re not quite there yet.

Wired.com: Having worked on so many expansions, do you find the process becoming faster and easier?

Brack: Well, there’s always new stuff. What ends up happening is we get faster at making some of the content in the various pipelines. But at the same time, we add things to that pipeline. A really good example is the Encounter Journal, which we released in 4.2. It’s awesome. It lets player know about all the bosses, all the abilities and the various things that they can do. But including that increases the amount of work that we have to do for every single boss from now. So even if we made content faster, we also add things to slow us down at more or less an equal rate. It’s super challenging.

Talk on Dailies and Bad Design

This is just a bad design. A game should not ask for daily commitment to enjoy what it has to offer.

They ask nothing - they merely reward a choice.

We typically provide some boundaries because, as you've illustrated, something that we allow, is something that can all too easily seem mandatory. That's not what we want, but we do want to provide a reason to come into the game, be in the world, and see what's happening on a frequent basis. It's nice to also be able to offer some rewards for doing that. Naturally, dailies shouldn't be the only way to accrue rewards, and they aren't. Dailies were, in part, a response to a World of Warcraft where there wasn't a lot of incentive to come play on non-raid days, since for many players, the only way to progress became dungeon runs and, for a few, raiding. We also wanted to provide another means of acquiring currency aside from professions, and new ways to acquire reputation with important factions too. They're designed to hit a lot of notes (I'm probably missing some), and I think that they're pretty successful. You don't have to hit your cap, (indeed, one of our fears about a raised daily cap is that players might feel compelled to hit the new, higher cap) but you can if you want to put in the time. Naturally, we also want to continue to add other means of progression to the end-game, and we're looking for ways to do so in a fun and compelling way.

I get concerned when I see players throwing out words like 'bad design'. Perhaps an individual dislikes a design choice, and that's fine. We do our best, but World of Warcraft can't be all things to all people, all the time. That said, making a value judgment about whether the design is 'bad' or not is not only un-constructive, but in the vast majority of the cases I've seen, such an assessment reveals that the design was not well understood to begin with.

These forums represent an opportunity to have a dialogue about the game. I think that choosing words that have context and meaning, and offering alternative solutions, makes for feedback which is more readily useful.

what is a proper description for rehashed content?

A response to many, many requests over the years from the community to revisit old dungeons and characters?

I have a question then: If the intent is to give players a choice, why is it that the Molten Front dailies award gear upgrades from tier 11? Unless you raided firelands, those dailies weren't a choice, they were a path to progression (which, in my opinion, was a wrong decision to make).

Daily quests like the Netherwing ones in Outland or the Argent Tournament in Northrend feel like a "choice" because ultimately the rewards involved have no bearing on your character's power (mounts and pets are cool to have, but aren't by any means mandatory). They feel optional. For non-rading characters, the Molten Front (and to a certain extent, Tol Barad) dailies don't "feel" optional at all, because opting out of them means you're giving up gear upgrades, which is never a cool thing to do.

Any comments on that?

There are plenty of other dailies where the rewards have been non-power related. The goal was different for Molten Front, and we deliberately wanted to offer a separate path to power for interested players. So, we wanted it to be compelling in that way. Still, it remains that there are alternative, non-raid, paths to power aside from Molten Front.

If the Time Lost protodrake, Poseidus, that drake in Deepholme, and the camel figurine in Uldum qualify as "enriching" then I'm going to suspend my account again. >.<

It could be argued that, by adding nuances to the zones they're in, they do enrich the game.

They add things to hunt for, to seek out, and achieve. They're not easy to get, and that's fine, because they weren't designed to be easy to get. It's a very particular kind of goal for a particular kind of player - we don't expect everyone to pursue them, and if it's not fun for you to do so, then hopefully there are fun goals for you to achieve that are suited to your playstyle.

So are you saying that your employer has never implemented a "bad" design? By that logic, they'd never have to change anything, ever. Fact is, your employer makes bad design decisions all the time. The saving factor is their willingness to correct those flaws when presented.

I don't think it would be reasonable to suggest that we haven't made mistakes. We've made them, and acknowledged them throughout the years. There are, however, differences between mistakes and bad design.

That said, those mistakes haven't typically aligned with the criticisms of 'bad design' I was referring to. Like I said, in just about every post where I've personally seen the words 'bad design' used, there was also a fundamental lack of understanding about design in general.

Usually, it boils down to just another way for people to try to enforce their vision of what World of Warcraft should be. I'm just pointing out that using that tactic in one's feedback is a good way to start off on the wrong foot.

WOW is the only game where I found myself generally doing the exact same thing I was doing over a year ago.

Forgive me for saying so, but that seems like a strange statement to me because most games I've played don't change much from year to year, if they change at all. Actually, I'm not doing the same thing in World of Warcraft now, that I was a year ago. The same general gist of things, sure. Games don't tend to radically change their core gameplay in a year's time. Most never change their gameplay at all. In that context, World of Warcraft changes quite a bit more than most games.

Gear Look Customization

Pretty please?I like transmogrifying in the new patch. It puts emphasis that our characters are strong and not just our gear. Sometimes wearing a dress or shirt looks really bad with shoulders..

At least for now, there are no plans to make other slots 'invisible'. We're starting things slow with the first roll out of Transmogrification, so the feature set has a good chance of expanding in the future.

It's also worth mentioning that shoulder items are highly distinctive, and a lot of effort is invested in making those items look cool and interesting. It's not currently a high priority to hide gear which is so integral to the overall look of World of Warcraft.

Your opinions have been duly noted. Fortunately, even if you can't turn them off, using the Transmogrification option will allow you to choose more aesthetically pleasing shoulders. If you happen to find all the shoulders in the game ugly, then I can't help you.

I understand that there are particular looks which are more minimalistic. Transmogrification isn't being added with the intention of making every conceivable look possible - at least, that's not the current intention. It's being added to provide more--a lot more--customization options. I think it's fair to say that it will achieve that goal admirably.

Let's see how things shake out. =)

Outlook on Loot System

What we are doing for 4.3 with the Raid Finder looting system (detailed here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3608426) is an experiment in order to try and reduce loot drama without removing the chance to benefit from offspec gear completely. In fact, a lot of what we are trying with Raid Finder for 4.3 is our very first attempt at a design that is going to need a lot of iteration before we’re happy with how it works. We’ll use the information we gather on the new looting system (we can call it Need+, for simplicity's sake) and Raid Finder in 4.3 to make both features even better for Mists of Pandaria.

The game currently does not have a very robust notion of what your spec is, so for now we can’t make the loot rules very stringent, other than checking your current role. In Mists of Pandaria, the game will have a well-developed "concept" of spec, and we can do things like let an Enhancement shaman roll need plus on an Agility axe without letting the Restoration shaman roll need plus. (The Resto shaman could still roll need though, since shaman can use axes and the player might presumably have an Enhancement offspec.)

EU Portuguese Realm Available Soon

With the release of the next World of Warcraft content update, Hour of Twilight (patch 4.3), players on European realms will be able to play World of Warcraft in Brazilian Portuguese. On December 7 a realm dedicated to the Portuguese community will open with optional time-limited free character transfers from specific European English realms with high Portuguese populations. Please stay tuned to these forums for additional information.

A pretty big news round up day, as we have a lot of news to share plus fun things like contest winners and our Deathwing kill video.

First and foremost, however, we have a job opening at Wowhead. It's always a huge honor to bring someone aboard our team and this time is no different. ZAM is growing and we've found ourselves in need of a Java Developer. If you have a lot of experience and know how to code, as well as have a strong passion for video games, you should look us up; after reading the requirements, just send your salary history and resume to jobs@wowhead.com if you're interested.

Deathwing Kill Video

I made this a few days ago for Tankspot--it's just me killing Deathwing on the final encounter of Dragon Soul from this week's PTR. I realized I never shared it, though!

A few words on the fight: first off, it's really fun. It looks boring when you see a video, because it's just generally boring to watch videos anyway; the gist of the fight is that you gain buffs, you have to dynamically jump to the platform, and then you have to engage Deathwing which removes your buff. After doing this four times, you face him and kill him.

It was fairly easy, but a GM talked with us directly and assured us they would be adding more difficulty in normal mode as well as heroic. He noticed us ignoring certain aspects to maximize DPS and being able to heal through it, so I'm sure they'll fix that.

There's also a cinematic that cues when he dies, however, it was a filler Cataclysm trailer at this point. So it's obvious he will have an awesome cinematic much like Lich King did after his final death.

Contest Winners

In other news, we had a really huge TCG contest last week as well as a quick giveaway for a few Blizzard store pets. It was a fun time to be the community manager this week--I love giving away free things!

We read almost every entry for the contest and tried to pick people who put creativity into their entries this time around as promised. As such, half our wins are random; the other half are merit based. Thanks for all the effort, even if you didn't win.

News Posts

Monk Class Color

Right now the monk is jade green. We like the color, but it's not absolutely set in stone. For those wondering how this would work with the hunter green, it's as different as the colors are for mages and shaman.

Zarhym on Redoing Tier Sets

i know it probably isn't one of the biggest concerns out there, but i was wondering if anyone knew if there was any plans to update the old gear to current graphics? I think it would be awsome...maybe not a top priority thing, but something to work on the side perhaps.

We don't have any plans to tamper with the art of existing tier sets. Transmogrification is being implemented, in part, to allow nostalgic players the option of wearing old gear without having to worry about the stats anymore. But, we don't want to go back and actually alter those looks. That'd almost defeat the purpose, especially given we'd prefer to focus our time on designing new sets to allow for more customization options (including aesthetic, stat-less sets to be used solely for Transmogrification).

The art and animation teams are incredibly busy, and sometimes I feel they don't get enough credit for the amount of work they do, or how much work is involved in each project. There are a number of projects on their list -- many of which players would love to see progress on -- but this isn't currently one of them that I'm aware of.

Progress on 4.3

We don't normally announce release dates for patches. I can say that we're still working on it and if you're interested in checking it out, it's available on the PTR. We have a lot of information out on the patch and are planning a nice little "round up" piece of information for the front page for those that may have missed some of the coverage.

WoW Annual Pass Extended to More Countries Such as Mexico

The World of Warcraft Annual Pass has been expanded to include more countries and is now available in Russia, Switzerland, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and more.*

For a limited time only, players who make a 12-month subscription commitment to World of Warcraft through the WoW Annual Pass will receive the following epic rewards:

Diablo III FREE – Download the digital version via Battle.net for free when the game launches. This is the full game, not a trial edition.

Tyrael’s Charger WoW Flying Mount – Ride for the Archangel of Justice on all current and future characters on a single World of Warcraft account. Tyrael’s Charger will arrive via in-game mail with the upcoming launch of patch 4.3.

Access to the Next WoW Expansion Beta Test – Get a guaranteed spot in the beta test for the next World of Warcraft expansion (at a time to be announced in the future).

Sign up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass here, and then keep an eye on the World of Warcraft community site or the Diablo III community site for future announcements regarding the launch dates of these bonuses.

For more information on this offer, including eligibility requirements and details on how the World of Warcraft Annual Pass applies to players who plan to purchase the Diablo III: Collector’s Edition, please read the full FAQ.

Patch 4.3 - PTR Build 14942 - Spell Changes

There's a small PTR patch that just hit the servers. The biggest news seems to be that potions were updated to be cheaper as well as more effective.

In short, Blizzard wants to know how you're feeling about your class(es). They've posted a feedback thread on both the EU and US forums, hoping to gather your insight into how your role is functioning and how you'd like it to function in both PvP and PvE environments.

We’re looking for feedback on your class as we work on changes and adjustments for a future game update. While we may be making some specific class changes in 4.3, what we’re looking for in this thread is overall feeling on the class as a whole for more long term changes in the future.

Here is the kind of feedback that is NOT helpful in this particular thread:

Concerns that your current damage, healing or tanking is not competitive. While this kind of feedback is often useful, it also is the kind of thing that can change from patch to patch, and so it isn’t as useful for long term vision changes.

Concerns that your feedback is being ignored or that we don’t take these kind of posts seriously, or otherwise posting anything that is off-topic or not in the spirit of this thread’s intent.

Requests for responses to your suggestions or feedback. The purpose of this thread is to get information to us, not the reverse.

We hope you take these threads seriously, as we’re going to be reading them very carefully. We ask that you take time to think and formulate a useful and objective reply, as this feedback could be used to alter your class in substantial ways.

We won’t be replying here addressing your concerns. This is purely for us to read your answers to the below questions.

Please copy the below questions into your reply and answer each one.

What type of content do you focus on?

If PvE, what type of PvE?

If PvP, what type of PvP?

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.

What makes playing your class more fun?

What makes playing your class less fun?

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)

What’s on your wish list for your class?

What spells do you use the least?

Blizzard Music Section

We are happy to announce the latest feature on the Blizzard site: the Blizzard Music Section. Check out some of your favorite musical numbers from Diablo, StarCraft, Warcraft, and World of Warcraft. With quick-and-easy access to the iTunes store, it has never been easier to browse our music, create your own playlist, and listen to the tunes you want, anytime, anywhere! Also, all you audiophiles out there, be sure to read the track notes straight from Blizzard’s sound team!

There were some blue posts last week and today that mostly dealt with the onslaught of questions about transmogrification, the Darkmoon Faire, and model updates. Yes, model updates--with everything else being revamped, including the long sought after armor customization, a lot of people have been pretty curious about the prospect of new models coming someday.

Highlights from today's news round up:

Replica items may mean that items from DMF may just be art skins, rather than the original gear--so it may be impossible to tell replicas from the real thing.

Death Knights will get their stater gear back, probably set up in Archerus, so non-DKs can't steal their unique armor!

Diablo III community site was launched!

Murkablo was confirmed as BlizzCon's pet reward, but everyone already knew that from when he was datamined--right?

Darkmoon Faire and Replicas

My emphasis in that quote is "replica" as I am wondering if this means Blizzard will be bringing back old items/Tiers/weps/etc. with some type of notation on the item to distinguish those who got the item when it was obtainable and who received it after the fact? Something like "Shadow of.... <insert item name>." Also what about weapons & unobtainable shields? Will the Darkmoon Faire expand its services in the future?

We haven't fully solidified the list of old items/sets that will make a return via the Darkmoon Faire carnies. We'll let you know once we've locked down what's for sale there in patch 4.3, but yes, we're likely to expand the vendor list in future updates.

"Replica" does mean that these items may very well just be art skins made available specifically for use with Transmogrification, devoid of their original stats. Once you copy those skins onto another item though, I don't know that one would be able to tell the difference between whether you earned the look back in the day, or from the Darkmoon Faire. Only the name of the item from which you're pulling art will be shown in the tooltip of the item you have equipped. So if the names of the items aren't changed when placed on Darkmoon Faire vendors, a player inspecting you wouldn't know the difference once you've mogged your look.

Death Knight Starter Gear for Transmogrification

Also, if they return the DK sets, are they going to be for DKs only? Or should I expect to see lots of Paladins and Warriors running around in it?

The current plan is to make them available via Acherus, which necessarily precludes non-DKs.

Okay, so, for clarification's sake, they'll be sold in Acherus, but, like most of its denizens, the vendor doesn't like non-DKs.

Sweet!!!!! TY so much Blizz! :D

The greens are still unconfirmed, btw. I don't want to get anyone's hopes up unfairly.

Diablo III Community Site Live

Our new Diablo III community site has gone live! This will be your sanctuary for all the latest developments from New Tristram and beyond, featuring community forums and regular blog updates. Just like this site, you can post comments and share Diablo III news items via Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media outlets. You'll want to check out the new Diablo III news feed regularly. We’ll use it to share everything about Diablo III and to highlight recent community activity, including your most entertaining videos, art, comics, fansites, and much more.

We hope you head over and get acquainted with the new site, and return often. We've got a lot in store leading up to the release of Diablo III, including the launch of the Game Guide section featuring lore, characters, classes, maps, and more. Additionally, you’ll see us on the new Diablo III forums. We look forward to sharing and discussing all the latest Diablo III news, content, and updates with you for a long time to come.

Blog comments, forum posting, and profile management are only available to those with an active StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, or Diablo III beta license.

BlizzCon 2011 WoW Pet: Murkablo

An ill omen streaks across the sky over Azeroth's Great Sea, heralding the arrival of this year's BlizzCon-exclusive World of Warcraft in-game companion: the fearsome-ish Murkablo, aquatic protégé of Diablo III's eponymous Lord of Terror! Anyone who attends BlizzCon 2011 or purchases this year's BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will receive a Murkablo to call their own, along with a yet-to-be-revealed StarCraft II in-game gift.

BlizzCon 2011 takes place on October 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center. If you order the Virtual Ticket Internet stream online through Battle.net, Murkablo and the StarCraft II gift will be automatically attached to the Battle.net account you use to make your purchase shortly after BlizzCon begins. DIRECTV customers who order the BlizzCon Pay Per View event will receive a code granting access to the Internet stream and the in-game gifts via email.

On Updating Character Models

this has annoyed me for a while- and with firelands out now i cant keep quiet anymore- blizzard, how dare you- you give thrall a model that is standing up right but keep other orcs slumped over? what the heck? i want my orcs to stand tall, and proud! if you can give thrall a tall-standing model than i want my orc characters to be proud of who they are too!

at least that would be nice since we are paying you for this game each month- and you obviously have the technology to renovate models.

We often see people request for model updates. This is something we'd definitely like to do at some point in time, but time is a very limited commodity for our art team. We also have to be very careful about what it means to "update" a model. We've made changes in the past to various characters and had some people be a bit upset that it was changed on them as they had made very specific choices about the look of their character. We try to be as sensitive as possible about these types of things.

I can't give you more information than that, but the idea isn't far from our minds. We just have a lot of things we still want to on multiple levels that we hope enhance the experience of the game for everyone.

There is a lot of new art that was introduced in Cataclysm along with upgrades in things such as water (as a very small example). We have some pretty high standards for ourselves as well and while we can always up the poly count, that only goes so far. We're talking about models that have existed since the beginning of the game and thus, aren't all as advanced as some of the newer models that have been introduced to the game. We've been upping more than the poly counts. We're doing more in the way of animation and the way models are articulated and move within the world.

Again, I think people are taking what I said to mean that there is a lack of desire on our end, and this is far from the truth. We absolutely agree that we could make improvements and would like to do so. It's just a matter of figuring out the "when" that this could be accomplished. There's a whole world (of warcraft) of things that are being worked on and we want to get to everything we can and make it count.

Updating existing character models isn't something we've been "waffling on." It's something we'd love to do, but the fact is the art team has finite resources. Updating the current playable race models to be more in-line with worgen and goblins requires much more than just increasing the poly count. There are more bone structures on the frames of newer models which allow for more animation options. In order to update older models, the wire frames have to change, which means a large number of existing animations and customizations/hairstyles would have to change.

It's much more of a massive overhaul than many players are anticipating. That isn't to say we don't want to do it, but it's difficult to justify delaying the creation of new art, models, and animations indefinitely to revamp old ones. And we have to make sure to do it in a way that doesn't give some players a feeling of detachment from the look they've had for almost seven years.

On Development Focus and Bugfixing

All the focus I've seen on transmogrification and I can't help but think - If only all that effort was put into some wicked content, rather than this novelty crap...

I have to say, I generally like all the FL boss mechanics, some cool stuff. from a healing perspective I love baleroc and alysrazor, that take it outside the box. However, the raid itself is pretty lame, a big open firey field with a bunch of trash and bosses slapped down on it.

I've seen a lot of these sorts of overstatements or oversimplifications of the work that we're doing on our end of things and I have to honestly say that it can get a bit tiring to see repeated as fact when it's opinion. While we greatly appreciate constructive feedback and opinion, we also want to make sure to encourage people to pause and make sure that what they're sharing with us and the rest of the community is constructive to begin with.

Let's start off first by clarifying that Transmogrification is a feature we felt would benefit the community in many ways. It should open up the opportunity for people to feel as if they have the ability to customize how their character looks while still retaining the stats they really like, want, or need. It is as of yet, untested on the PTR, but it will be. The "rules" of what can and can't be used are still in development, and even after the rules are set at the live release, we may well add additional options into the system. This system should lend itself well to long term use and enjoyment for many people.

That said though, (and yes we did have to spend time on the technical end of things to make sure it is going to work well), we are also working on other things including the Void Storage, but more importantly, are working on some pretty amazing content for patch 4.3 which includes new dungeons and the Raid on Deathwing. We're not quite ready to give you all the details on these as of yet, but I can tell you that we're looking at some pretty great storylines and events to be played out. I can assure you that despite what your perception may be, Firelands was not designed by simply plopping down bosses in a field of fire, nor is anything we design quite so simple. If it was, we'd probably all get more sleep and spend more time on the company yacht. Right? ;)

I'm sure your perception is that our only focus is Transmogrification because you've only seen us really getting into the details on it recently and it's been a hot topic for the community overall. But don't be fooled into thinking that the content to come is going to be a simple paper cut out puppet show in a cardboard box.

Again, please don't take this as me disregarding your opinion or thoughts. Just be reassured though that we're not "just" doing anything in regard to the upcoming content. There has been many many hours of work put into what is coming: many meetings, many strategy sessions, much design work, coding, artwork, music, animation, etc. If we make it look "easy" then I guess there's not much we can do about that. ;) We have some truly talented and amazing people working on these things, so I guess we just can't help making it look that way.

*As always, I'd like to remind everyone that if you choose to take part in these discussions, you should refrain from personal attacks or non-constructive posting so that the thread doesn't become derailed. Once that happens, we either have to try to get the train back on the track, or just lock it off and leave the wreckage where it lays.

All I know is that if the next patch notes say "We fixed the awful click-to-move bug... and also, here's transmogrification" then I'll dance the happy dance.

If you just keep rolling out new stuff while the bug list grows, I'll dance the sad dance.

Unfortunately, we can't just put out foggers to kill bugs, but I can assure you that we don't choose to not fix bugs just for the heck of it. Some bugs are just harder to kill/fix than others or rely on even new technology to sort them out. Sometimes a bug is even darn near impossible to reproduce even if we've seen it ourselves. Thus why we're always very appreciative of the community taking time to report these to us (with as much detail as possible) so we can find and fix them.

That said though, that quest is never ending. World of Warcraft is a very complex game and what was fixed one moment could get glitched out again the next if a build changes or code changes. We do what we can do stay on top of it, but unfortunately, we have human limitations that get in the way despite the introduction of our new cyber-enhancement program. (It's fledgling yet so there may be bugs in that system too... (Ok, I'm kidding about cyber-enhancements)).

So I'm sorry you find this kind of feedback "tiring" Neth, but it's also tiring to never have it addressed in a satisfactory manner. Yeah, I know, the same people who pump out dungeon and raid bosses are not necessarily on the same team that's rolling out Transmogrification. Guess what? As a consumer, I don't care what goes on behind the curtain. All I care is that you try and keep up such that I, and the people I play with, don't get bored.

I knew someone would pick up on that word of all words. ;)

I'll continue it and say, it's also tiring hearing that we're not addressing things in a 'satisfactory manner'. Not because we don't want to put in the effort or that we're giving up on trying, it's just that when the effort is put in, it's not enough for select people. Of course it's that way because we have such a diverse population (which is great) so we're never going to address everything to everyone's satisfaction.

That said though, I wanted to make sure you know that I appreciate you taking the time to write your post. I appreciate the constructive feedback and also wanted to acknowledge that we are well aware of the feeling that we're not delivering content fast enough. We are continuing to find ways to do just this. Just keep in mind that we do not want (nor are choosing to) deliver anything that isn't up to our standards. So, we still will hold to the idea that if we feel something isn't good enough or isn't working how we wanted it to, we will not put it out there just so we can say we did.

For the Call to Arms bug... I'll have to revisit that topic elsewhere. I know we had some things that were addressed or being looked into at one point.

For those who continue to support us and our efforts, we really do appreciate it. Just please remember that even those who may seem "negative" are supporting us in their own way by simply letting us know about the things that they are experiencing or feeling too.

Blizzard Entertainment at Gamescom 2011: Recap

Blizzard attended gamescom again this year, and this time we had Diablo III, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm all available to play. Were you one of the record breaking 275,000 visitors to come to the event? If you were, we hope you enjoyed playing our games, participating in our developer signing sessions and quizzes, as well as watching our developer interviews, contests and the highly entertaining show matches and live raids.

StarCraft II: Show MatchesAs well as having a version of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm available to play, we also had several awesome StarCraft II show matches, with some of the best and most-well known players battling it out on the stage.

TSL.Killer, SeleCT, MC, DIMAGA, mOOnGLaDe, Tarson, White-Ra, MaNa, Dignitas.KiLLeR, DieStar and Puma dazzled the audience with their lightning-quick moves, all set to the smooth stylings of HomerJ’s exceptional shoutcasting.

World of Warcraft: Live RaidsTop class guilds For the Horde and Ensidia showcased their team skills against fearsome Firelands raid bosses in our World of Warcraft live raids.

Diablo III: Hands onA playable version of the upcoming Diablo III was available and each morning eager fans rushed in to ensure our queue filled to capacity in only a couple of minutes.

Costume ContestOn Saturday, our show stage was transformed by our costume contest. Dressed as the brooding Sylvanas Windrunner, Laura B took first place and a well-earned trip to BlizzCon 2011.

Dance ContestOn Friday we held a dance contest on the stage, where participants displayed their own creative interpretations of the World of Warcraft racial dances. Performing the female goblin dance with great skill, Ronja O walked away with first prize.

Thanks for coming!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the participants in our contests and events and of course all of the visitors who stopped by our booth to play our games.

We have a lot of random posts for transmogrification lurking about from this week and last.

It's probably easiest to simply sum them up:

Heirlooms will be eligible targets for Transmogrification--you won't have to look bad while leveling up!

Mainhand can only be applied to mainhand and offhand only to offhand.

The jury is still out on "silly" items. They are debating whether or not you can use fun offhands like frying pans, fish, and so on.

While not planned for day one, greys and whites might eventually be an option. The wording used by the Community Manager implies it's not set in stone either way.

There was also a clarification about void storage (no, those prices are not set in stone) and a good PvP post session with Zarhym covering everything from twinks to deleting warlocks from the game forever. Oh, don't worry--he was kidding.

On Transmogrification

That's still under discussion at the moment. Right now, Legendary weapons and Heirlooms probably won't be eligible, while some Bind on Account items probably will be eligible. It's not set in stone yet though.

I'd like to provide an update on this statement I made. It turns out that Heirlooms will be eligible targets for Transmogrification.

Also (and this applies to all Transmogrified items), trading, mailing, auctioning or depositing an item in a guild bank will remove the Transmogrified art, returning the item in question to its original artwork.

So, while you won't have to stare at the same old Heirlooms the whole time you're leveling, you won't be able to send a set of Heirlooms that have been Transmogrified with tier 13 art to your level 10 alt.

Will Main Hand only weaponry be 'Mog"ifiable to the offhand slot?

Mainhand can only be applied to mainhand, and offhand can only be applied to offhand. This is partially due to the restrictions on certain types of weapon art.

Again, these are our first tentative steps with Transmogrification, and there's room for modifying the rules later on after the system is introduced, and we see how things shake out. Heck, the rules aren't even quite set in stone right now, and might change further before the system is introduced.

Btw, if WoW was designed to not be "silly" why have the items in the game in the first place o.o?

World of Warcraft has a design aesthetic that limits silliness, not omits it utterly. We all like a laugh now and then. That's why we have so many fun novelty items, easter eggs and humorous quests. Still, with a handful of exceptions, there's been a pretty firm line drawn between what amounts to a novelty item (which we anticipate players showing off occasionally for a laugh, or to enjoy on a temporary basis), and items that we intend players to use in their day to day activities.

It's that handful of exceptions that are the sticking point. It's the items like frying pans, cleavers and rolling pins that we're not sure we want players running around with on a constant basis. The jury is still out on that.

I'm sure that there will be those that still find ways to make the most ridiculous outfits possible despite any precautions we take. We can't possibly anticipate every permutation of gear combinations that people will come up with, but we can strive to design the system so that there are fewer completely ridiculous looking characters running around. Yes, that's partially subjective. Yes, we also have a design aesthetic that, even with the introduction of the Transmogrifier, we still want to adhere to. No, I don't care if you personally think that any given tier set looks "silly"; that's not what's at issue.

The current say so is as long as the gear's the right material (IE Mail,Cloth,Plate) and not Silly looking like the frying pan Weapon, you're fine.

The gear also still has to have stats aside from armor on it. That means that there are a lot of white or grey items that might not be available initially when Transmogrification goes live.

As an aside, a lot of people have been asking about hiding shoulders, belts, etc. For now, it's looking pretty unlikely that we'll offer the option to hide anything aside from helm and cloak.

I think it will be more then 1 g an item, I'm thinking 30 ish an item, size will probably be an issue also, if you want to make your little 2h look like a big bad 2h you will probably pay 50 gold. .. lol but 1 gold is way to low, I think blizzard wants this to be a bit of a gold sink.

The gold cost for Transmogrification hasn't been set in stone, but it's likely to be very similar to Reforging, meaning it'd scale with item level (probably the level of the item actually equipped).

We've added some new images to our Void Storage preview which show off the updated UI for Void Storage vaults, as well as the new bag search feature in action. Let us know what you think!

Void Storage vaults will be per character, not per account. We're still very interested in providing a way for players to share BoA items cross-realm, but there are a number of technological milestones we need to reach before we can make that kind of service available.

The prices for unlocking a Void Storage vault, depositing items, and withdrawing items are still under discussion. The values shown in the blog screenshots should not be considered final.

You don't need to place an item in Void Storage in order to use it for Transmogrification. The systems are completely separate. They're designed to complement one another, but not require each other.

Most tabards will be eligible for Void Storage (excluding a few which cannot become soulbound to a character).

The Transmogrify feature will allow players to customise the look of their character within reason. We've already stated that it's likely certain items will not be available to transmogrify, including fish as weapons, and other items such as frying pans, for this very reason. As you know, armour types will also be locked, preventing tanks in cloth dresses for example.

The rules will be tweaked as time goes on, but we're keen to keep the outlandish outfits to a minimum. What players wear while socialising in cities is up to them, exactly the same as now.

We're still discussing exactly what will or won't be available for transmogrification. So far, as others here have said, if it has stats and isn't a "silly" item such as a fish weapon, to my knowledge it will likely be available to transmogrify. However, as I said, nothing is finalised yet and things are subject to change before and after the feature has been released.

Blizz Blues

On New Players Learning to Play WoW

I'd definitely recommend finding a nice guild to help you out. Many "veteran" players will gladly give advice to new people and take the time to explain things. I personally enjoy helping newbies out—it's been a while since I started the game back in vanilla, but I still remember how daunting the game can be when you barely know how to operate your character, let alone all the ins and outs of the multiple features WoW has to offer.

In regards to the game being easier these days, yes and no. I think many long-term players will say it's a lot easier now because of things like the built-in quest guide, but you have to take into account all there still is to learn, not to mention the new features there are now such as things like glyphs and the LFD tool for example.

A friend of mine (who'd never picked up an MMO before) recently started playing WoW. It wasn't until I had him asking me things like "How do I reply to people?" and "How do I change what my character is wearing?" that I realised just how much there is to learn if you're starting from absolute scratch. He's nowhere near ready to try out the LFD tool yet, let alone getting his head around the benefits of glyphs and reforging.

Keep going, Ennee. There's lots to pick up over time, but you'll get there with some friends to make the learning a little smoother :)

Tyrande & Malfurion: Seeds of Faith

As the High Priestess of Elune and leader of the kaldorei, Tyrande Whisperwind has weathered millennia of world-shaking battles and crossed blades with the worst of the demonic Burning Legion. Throughout these trials, she has relied upon both the soothing light of the moon goddess Elune and the support of her love Malfurion Stormrage to see her through any hardship.

But the Cataclysm is like nothing Tyrande has seen before, and the chaos enveloping the world threatens to break the iron will of the night elf leader. In these uncertain nights, Tyrande will need the strength to lead her people through the darkness alone.

Tyrande sighed and placed her hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "Your courage and steadfastness have brought us this news, Morthis. Thank you for that. This is the first we have heard from the mainland since this tragedy struck. We will ask no more of you now. Please, rest."

The scout nodded and walked out in slow, tired strides.

Malfurion turned to his wife. Her beautiful, nearly ageless face was stricken with worry, fear, and a trace of the immovable determination he had come to recognize over their long courtship.

"There were five victims at Rut'theran," she said. "None whom I could save."

"Tyrande..." Malfurion enclosed her hands in his comfortingly.

"I have to go to her, Mal. Shandris is like a daughter to me." She paused. "Perhaps the only daughter I will ever have."

You can find the story, along with a link to download it as a PDF, here.

A Chat With the PvP Community

Last week, Zarhym had an impromptu chat with the PvP community. It was a lot like what Ask the Devs should have been, in our opinion. It was great to see some open, fun interaction about the state of PvP and what the future holds.

My name is Zarhym. Hi there.

I know many of you have been feeling neglected as of late and have several concerns with the current state of PvP. To that end, I've punched those who would generally assign me with tasks, kicked them while they were down and shouted, "I'm going to take some friggin' time to talk to the PvP community! Go away! (But please don't let the injuries you've just suffered reflect on my next performance review.)"

So, my schedule's open for a bit. What's up?

would really love to know why there was no mmr reset after the problem was "fixed"

That would essentially be a reset of Season 10. That'd be a rather massive logistical undertaking (season rolls are more complicated than I even know), and we felt the fix was fast enough to normalize this season over time. One thing's certain though, it wasn't an ideal situation, and we know it had a demoralizing effect on those actually dedicated to fair competition.

Lowbie pvp is still borked.

JUST SAYIN

We talked to Ghostcrawler about this yesterday. He's well aware of this, but more importantly, he's not very happy about it either. The class design team's first priority is obviously balance around the end game, but absolute neglect of low-level balance isn't okay. This is something that isn't going to improve much in patch 4.3, but we hope to have more sound solutions coming.

Hi Zar,

Quick question,Why are shadow priests a free kill in arena or bgs? Seriously, in 2s, or 3s if they get focused they are done. Sure they have a few fears, but those can get trinketed or easily gotten out of. Our dots aren't even worth applying... Woo, 3.2k dmg, 6k crit... Our mind spike is interuptable, and basically we're bad warlocks with flash heal. Will this be fixed or should I just roll a lock?

Granted, Shadow priests might be a little tricky in PvP. That said, there are some absolutely ridiculous Shadow priests out there in Arenas right now. If you watched the NA Battle.net Invitational VoDs (we finally got the remaining matches posted today: http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/blog/3348315), there is a crazy-good Shadow comp 3's team (EG): Spriest, Aff lock, Resto shaman.

Zarhym - really appreciate you lending ear to us PvP enthusiasts. I have two questions:1) Given that you are now implementing raid finder tool would you please please implementing similar tool for rated battlegrounds? Some of us have weird play timings and this make it extremely difficult to find rated teams :(

We can bring this up with the developers. It'd probably have to fundamentally function a bit differently from the Dungeon Finder and proposed Raid Finder though, otherwise a cross-realm random RBG Finder wouldn't differ that much from randomly queuing for a normal Battleground, aside from the fact your team can persist after a battle concludes.

2) This has been asked many times but is there any status update BoA realm transfer? It really sucks having to pay money to transfer character when all we want to do is transfer BoA items to new realm because friend/family don't want to roll on PvP realm :(

Once again thank you very much.

We also spoke to GC about this again yesterday (we ping him about it a lot). He made it clear that there are no design issues or qualms about allowing this functionality. Instead, it's an issue of programmer bandwidth. Because of the way WoW was originally structured around accounts, followed by the introduction of Battle.net accounts, there's a technical limitation to allowing cross-realm BoAs which has to be overcome by our Battle.net team, not the WoW development team. At the moment that team is incredibly busy building out the Battle.net platform to expand its functionality for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, and get Diablo III going.

We're adamant about making this happen. Unfortunately, I can't really give you a timeline and I know it's already felt too long.

about that aff locks and shamans are the main classes doing well in high end and even low end pvp these classes have far to much synergy and because of this any class combined with them does well, do you have guys have any intention to fix this?

Based on my recent conversation with GC, he did mention in particular that a Resto shaman tweak needs to be made. In particular, he's prepared to get his nasty claws on Windshear.

He's gone for the day and I don't want to try and paraphrase our conversation, at the risk of sounding incredibly naive. ;p Besides, I don't want this thread to be dictated by class balance.

Any chances of bringing back old AV? Seems like most PVPers support this idea.

I even ranted to Tom Chilton and Greg Street about this recently. For all the reasons it was wrong, I still loved losing all track of time while involved in an endless -- quite literally -- battle for AV. I loved doing constant suicide runs from SF graveyard on my gnome 'lock just to try and interrupt the Horde summons.

We haven't stopped talking about it. Part of the problem is Battlegrounds are incredibly scripted, to the point they're actually worked on quite a bit by our encounter design team. We need to keep working on new ways of developing Battlegrounds to improve their design.

But, to your point, it's doubtful AV 1.0 will be resurrected, and there's only so much tweaking we can do to try and improve the current one -- we'd be working on very old framework with AV. At this point, it'd probably be easier and produce better results if we started from scratch.

Skirmishes, sir?

Skirmishes are a weird phenomenon. When designing Cataclysm, we looked at the data and saw an extremely fractional percentage of the entire playerbase actively using Skirmishes. So with all of the other changes happening, along with BG War Games, we decided not to polish up Skirmishes and keep them in.

The last time we talked to the developers about it, they mentioned the possibility of these going back in to compliment War Games. But given they saw very little evidence to suggest coding for Skirmishes paid off for players, it seems a low priority.

1. I've been hearing that the new gear swapping feature won't work for pvp gear. That isn't true, right? :)

That isn't true. Mogging will work with PvP gear. You can even swap the look of PvP gear to PvE and vice versa.

Sorry, I know I didn't address the rest of your concerns. I just don't have good or quick answers for them right now. <3

What's the point of the lock portal if you have to be in LoS of it... lmao all it does is become a crappy blink then.

Now that you answered this, I just want to know what your thoughts are on the "Halaa" type zone suggested by other players, Logistically speaking or ever your opinion of it.

Speaking personally, I think they have a good place in WoW and should come back. A place like Halaa doesn't take nearly as much design time as a place like Tol Barad or Wintergrasp, yet the payoff is relatively high. The Tol Barad style is a quite massive undertaking, and ultimately becomes a very contentious PvP content topic, especially when daily quests and raid bosses are at stake.

Bring back world PvP. I want to see people fighting at the crossroads again. There is no world anymore, Azeroth is dead. In classic, you could find hundreds of people leveling them and start a huge pvp battle, killing the gold farmers in tyre's hand, tarren mill pvp battles, etc. Everyone just sits in major cities and clicks 2 buttons for bg's.

All I can say for now is that we've driven people to SW/Org in this expansion too much and that's not cool. We want to fix that in the next go.

Zarhym,

Will we see an ask the Devs class version so people will be able to ask and have answered their questions on class issues? While I do appreciate your time and I know you are trying to give us some attention here, these are not the questions that the majority of the pvp community wants answered.

We're still working on a revamp for the Ask the Devs series. But, what you're likely to see before then is more of a feedback gathering session for each class. We'd like to ask several fairly general questions of each class soon and get player feedback on what works/what doesn't.

Any plans to make warlocks not useless in battlegrounds?

We might remove warlocks. Or Battlegrounds.

Sorry. I think I've exhausted the information I can actively provide for the night. Please keep the conversation going folks. Thank you for keeping it mostly constructive too.